The “Wacky Races” come to life!!

One of my favorite Saturday morning cartoons of all time was a show called Wacky Races. Eleven souped-up cars compete in long-distance road races. It really didn’t matter who won the race; all that mattered was that the drivers of those cars found a way to either eliminate their opponents, or accidentally eliminate themselves in the process.

I should note that Wacky Races was originally designed as a live-action game show, where contestants actually bet on which car would win the race. The game show portion of the program was eventually dropped, but the cartoon lived on. It spawned two spinoff programs, Dastardly and Muttley and Their Flying Machines, and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop.

Oh heck, why am I describing the show when I can show you a clip from the show’s intro?

Remember? Yeah, it was a fun 30-minute diversion in the Saturday morning cartoon lineup o’ fun.

So why… why, pray tell… would I feature this cartoon in my blog today?

Maybe it has something to do with this commercial.

In 2013, an advertising agency created a commercial for the Peugeot 208 – and the commercial featured some cameo appearances from, of all people, the Slag Brothers, the Ant Hill Mob in the Bulletproof Bomb, Penelope Pitstop in the Compact Pussycat, Dick Dastardly and Muttley in the Double 00, the Red Max in the Crimson Haybaler …

Ho. Key. Smokes. Check this out.

Wow. Somehow, I don’t remember Penelope Pitstop looking THAT hot. But then again, I was probably seven years old when Wacky Races first aired, and all I cared about at that time was whether I could watch the entire Saturday morning lineup before some adult woke up, came downstairs, turned off the television and told me to go outside and “get some fresh air.”

Maybe if there was a Peugeot 208 in the driveway… heck yeah…

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4 Responses

Chuck, that was awesome! I loved the Wacky Races as a kid. In fact, I DVR’d it when it was running on Boomerang a couple years ago. However, don’t forget, the cartoon was inspired by in The Great Race (1965).